Why should he be ashamed, exactly? Gingrich unilaterally disarmed on negative ads, whether because he thought they’d backfire and hurt his image or because his own Super PAC can’t yet afford them, and now he’s peeved that Romney and Ron Paul haven’t followed suit. But why would they? The ads have been invaluable in deflating Gingrich’s Iowa balloon and making it a race again. And spare me the “attack ads only help Obama” lecture: The One has an army of oppo people ready to air Gingrich’s dirty laundry if he’s the nominee. Does anyone seriously think Obama needs Mitt Romney’s ad team to remind him of Gingrich’s relationship to Freddie Mac?

“Well, that makes my point,” Gingrich said. “If you see Romney, ask him to take them off the air. I mean, you know, it would be nice if candidates were responsible for the things being done by the people who know them personally who are trying to help them get elected.”

He later closed his 37-minute session with this: “Ask (your friends) if they run into one of these candidates, to tell them they ought to be ashamed of themselves, to take this junk off the air. And don’t hide behind some baloney about the superPAC that I actually have no control over that happens to be run by five of my former staff. That’s just baloney.”

“We really ought to let campaigns raise the money they need and just get rid of these super PACs,” Romney told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”…

The Gingrich campaign likewise sees Romney as being duplicitous. The candidate’s spokesman, RC Hammond, told a reporter on Tuesday that Romney is “either a lying politician or a piece of sh*t.” The statement was meant to be off the record, but was accidentally tweeted (and subsequently deleted). Hammond expressed his “sincere apologies to Governor Romney” in an email to The Huffington Post.

Romney, of course, is not alone in taking both sides of this issue. President Barack Obama has criticized the proliferation of independent electoral groups, going so far as to warn that they are a threat to democracy.

True enough about The One, but then he’s the guy who used to drone on in 2007 about the glories of public financing for campaigns before summarily dumping the public finance system the next year when he realized he could raise lots, lots, lots more cash by opting out. And true enough about Romney too. When Scarborough asked him this morning why he didn’t call off the dogs, he had the stones to say, “I’m not allowed to communicate with the super PAC in any way, shape or form” — because, see, it’s totally separate from his campaign. Two clips below, one of the newest ad from his Super PAC kicking Gingrich’s teeth in and the other a vintage 1994 snippet of him calling for PACs … to be abolished. Turns out he’s a hypocrite who’ll say or do whatever’s necessary to win. Who knew?